For more than 15 years, New York state has led the country in domestic outmigration: For every American who comes here, roughly two depart for other states. This outmigration slowed briefly following the onset of the Great Recession. But a recent Marist poll suggests that the rate is likely to increase: 36 percent of New Yorkers under 30 plan to leave over the next five years. Why are all these people fleeing?

For one thing, according to a recent survey in Chief Executive, our state has the second-worst business climate in the country. (Only California ranks lower.) People go where the jobs are, so when a state repels businesses, it repels residents, too.

Indeed, the poll also found that 62 percent of New Yorkers planning to leave cited economic factors -- including cost of living (30 percent), taxes (19 percent) and the job environment (10 percent) -- as the main reason.

Upstate, a big part of the problem is extraordinarily high property taxes. New York has the countrys 15 highest-taxed counties, including Nassau and Westchester, which rank Nos. 1 and 2.

Most of the property tax goes toward paying the states Medicaid bill -- which is unlikely to diminish, since the states most powerful lobby, the alliance of the hospital workers union and hospital management, has gone unchallenged by our new governor, Andrew Cuomo.

New York City doesnt suffer from outmigration to the extent that the state does; in fact, the city grew slightly in the last decade, thanks to immigration from other countries.

Theres also more work in Gotham than in the state as a whole. The problem is that the kind of work available shows that the city accommodates new immigrants much better than it supports middle-class aspirations. A recent report from the Drum Major Institute has the data: “The two fastest-growing industries in New York are also the lowest-paid. More than half of the citys employment growth over the past year has been in retail, hospitality and food services, all of which pay their workers less than half of the citys average wage.”

Worse, more than 80 percent of the new jobs are in the citys five lowest-paying sectors.

Parts of the country are seeing a revival of manufacturing -- traditionally a source of upward mobility for immigrants -- but not New York City, where manufacturing continues to decline. The culprits here include the citys zoning policies, business taxes and decaying physical infrastructure.

Then theres the cost of living in New York City. A 2009 report by the Center for an Urban Future found that “a New Yorker would have to make $123,322 a year to have the same standard of living as someone making $50,000 in Houston. In Manhattan, a $60,000 salary is equivalent to someone making $26,092 in Atlanta.” Even Queens, the report found, is the fifth most expensive urban area in the country.

The implications of Gothams “hourglass economy” -- with all the action on the top and the bottom and not much in the middle -- are daunting.

The Drum Major report, which noted that 31 percent of the adults employed in New York work at low-wage labor, came with a political agenda. The institute wants the city to subsidize new categories of work by expanding the scope of “living-wage” laws, which require higher pay than minimum-wage laws do, to all businesses that receive city funds or contracts. But that would mean higher taxes on the middle class and a further narrowing of the hourglass midsection.

Gov. Cuomo is calling for a property-tax cap but has postponed the question of “mandate relief” for localities -- for example, relaxing state laws that force localities to pay out exorbitant pension benefits. Mayor Bloomberg has pledged not to increase local taxes -- but even at their current level, city taxes and regulations will keep serving as an exit sign for aspiring 20-something workers.

In short, we can expect New York to lead the country in outmigration for the near future.